Count Belisarius (67 page)

Justinian told his admiral: ‘Discharge the cargoes of the vessels. We shall not sail.' His Chamberlain (another than Narses, who was still in Italy) cried in pretended indignation: ‘Are the citizens mad that they give thanks for their deliverance not to Your Glorious Serenity who ordained the battle, but to Belisarius – by whose neglect Thrace had been wasted and the city all but lost?'

Justinian sent this message to Belisarius: ‘Enough now. Let the Huns go in peace, not wasting lives in vain battles. We may have need for their services in wars against our other enemies. If you pursue them farther you will fall under our displeasure.'

Belisarius obeyed. Then Justinian's messengers rode forward to Zabergan's camp. ‘The Emperor's message. Following the example of the Glorious Christ who once, in flesh, ordered His servant Peter to put up his sword after he had valiantly struck at a Jewish officer and wounded him, we have likewise called off our armies. But we conjure you in Christ's name to be gone in peace.'

The Cham Zabergan was puzzled by this message, but understood at least that Belisarius had been recalled. Regaining courage, he continued in Thrace all the summer long, burning and pillaging. In the autumn Justinian offered him money to be gone, and Zabergan, afraid lest his retreat might be cut by a flotilla of armed vessels sent up the Danube from the Black Sea, signed a treaty and withdrew.

Justinian now set himself feverishly to the task of rebuilding the long wall of Anastasius – though he took no steps for the training of a proper defence force. The courtiers cried: ‘See how the Father of his people puts his negligent officers to shame!'

When Belisarius and his 300 returned by the Fountain Gate, the Guards and peasants behind them singing the paean of victory, they were greeted with garlands and palms and kisses from the enthusiastic citizenry. From the Palace came only a single, curt message: ‘Count Belisarius has overstepped his authority in dismantling the palings of our park at the Golden Gate without a signed authority from the Keeper of the Parks. Let these stakes be restored forthwith.' The last phrase became a byword in the wine-shops: if a man who had done his neighbour a signal service was afterwards taken up sharply by him for some slight fault, the outraged benefactor would exclaim: ‘Ay, ay, dear sir, and let the stakes be restored forthwith.'

This Battle of Chettos was the last battle that Count Belisarius fought; and let none doubt that my account is true, since these things
were not done far away on a distant frontier, but here close by, not a day's journey from a city of a million inhabitants. One may ride out for an afternoon's pleasure to view the defile, and the two camps, the Cham Zabergan's at Melantias and Count Belisarius's at Chettos, and return to the city again before evening falls.

H
OW
can I bear to tell of the final cruelty, not possessing his patience or great heart who suffered it? My story has reached the year of our Lord 564, when Justinian had completed the eightieth year of his life and the thirty-seventh of his reign. The Empire was at peace at last, but it was such peace as a sick man attains after the crisis of a violent fever; and none can say, will he recover or will he die.

The Emperor had grown slovenly in appearance and slovenly in speech; and – this stout champion of Orthodoxy, this harsh persecutor of heretics – had now himself lapsed into a scandalous heresy concerning the nature of the Son.

It had been Theodora's view that the body of Jesus Christ had been insensible to fleshly passions and weaknesses, and was in fact incorruptible flesh, and therefore not human flesh; for the character of all ordinary flesh is to corrupt, she said, unless it be converted into a mummy, in the Egyptian fashion, or frozen by accident in a solid block of ice. But the Orthodox view was that Jesus, until the Resurrection, subsisted in corruptible human flesh, and that to deny this was Monophysitism, and detracting from the greatness of the sacrifice that Jesus had made for mankind.

Justinian brought forward Theodora's view (which in her lifetime he had always opposed) as a new discovery of his own; having her arguments fresh in his memory. In an edict he stigmatized those who held the opposite view as ‘worshippers of the corruptible'. He required all patriarchs and bishops to assent to this novel article of faith. In trepidation they begged leave to consider the matter for a while. But the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was a careful scholar and a very upright man, tore his clothing and put dust on his head, exclaiming in such terms as these: ‘This is worse even than the heresy of the Monophysites – it verges upon the blasphemy of the filthy Manichees, who declare that the two natures of the Son are contradictory. For, my dear brothers, if Jesus Christ, when living here upon earth, was in truth insensible to passions and weaknesses (as His Clemency would have us believe) what shall we say of the famous weeping for Lazarus, and of those protests on the Cross – the plea that the cup of suffering
be put from Him? Such acts, testified to by the Holy Evangelists, would be either madness or false feigning if the body of Jesus had, forsooth, been the invulnerable body of a deity.'

The Cathedral clerics informed against the Patriarch, and he was deposed.

Belisarius expressed no opinion on these matters. When Sergius, a leading Senator, questioned him about them, he replied: ‘It is difficult enough to live according to the commands of Christ, without perplexing oneself with philosophical inquiries as to His nature. I would as soon busy myself with a critical study of the personal character of the Emperor.'

Sergius looked closely at him to see whether there was sharp satire hidden in his words, but answered: ‘Best of men, would not such a study be most illuminating?'

Every day Belisarius attended the Emperor at the Palace; unless the Court was in recess, when he would visit his estates and go hunting there. He remained frugal in habits, generous to the poor, beloved by his friends, and between him and my dear mistress Antonina no words ever passed but words of love and understanding. My mistress conformed to the Christian code of manners, and had by this time abandoned all her pagan ways – except that she still used certain innocent charms for the cure of toothaches and headaches and for immunity from witchcraft. So calm and orderly was the tenor of their lives that it seemed as if they were taking a slow walk together towards the grave, hand in hand, and that no further obstacle would be set in their path, or disaster overtake them.

But Justinian hated Belisarius with an unconquerable hate, and loathed the prospect of dying, to leave his enemy in the enjoyment of unchecked fame and prosperity. ‘He has stolen our glory,' was Justinian's cry. ‘Our ungrateful subjects have a greater regard for him than for the Sacred Person of their Emperor.'

The infamous Procopius, who had been military secretary to Belisarius in all his wars, had spent some years in writing a long history of them. Being a downright, cantankerous man, not given to flattery, he had told the bitter truth, concealing little or nothing about the treachery of this general and the incompetence of that, and had given due credit to Belisarius for his many victories gained against such enormous odds. He had not directly blamed Justinian for his caprice, incompetence, cruelty, procrastination, meanness, ingratitude, yet had
told the historical facts in so straightforward a way that no person with sense, reading them, could fail to form a most unfavourable opinion of the monarch or to conceive the greatest admiration for the general. This history was at last sent to the copying schools at Alexandria, where it was published. It had circulated widely before Justinian became aware of its existence, some five years before the Battle of Chettos.

When Procopius heard that the Emperor was angry and realized that he was in danger of death, he wrote an abject apology. He begged his Master to believe that, if he had written ill, Belisarius was to blame for having given him false information; and he undertook not only to withdraw all copies of the book, but also to write a historical work in eulogy of Justinian's own mighty deeds. Justinian pardoned him, gave him a pension, and raised him to patrician rank. Procopius took good care to speak only slightingly of his former patron, whom he no longer saluted in the streets, in order to retain the Emperor's favour. But Justinian was greatly dissatisfied when the work of eulogy was at last delivered to him. It proved to be only an account of his abstemiousness, his learning and piety, of churches built and fortifications raised. He had expected the former history to be rewritten in another style, so that he and not his subject Belisarius would be given credit for the conquest of Africa and Italy. He stopped Procopius's pension.

Then Procopius in the bitterness of his heart wrote a book of libels not only upon Belisarius and my mistress Antonina but upon the Emperor himself and dead Theodora. Sometimes he told the truth, sometimes he distorted the facts, sometimes he lied–according to his vindictive purposes. (Even I, Eugenius, was introduced into this farrago: for example, I was supposed to have assisted my mistress in the murder of the maid Macedonia: whose tongue, he said, was cut in little pieces and cast into the sea.) Procopius boasted to his friends: ‘I have written a book that will put mildew and blight upon the names of certain great ones who have wronged me.' But he kept the book from all eyes, intending it for posterity.

In the autumn after the Battle of Chettos, a fresh conspiracy to assassinate the Emperor was formed by a group of senators, headed by Sergius and Marcellus (the same who had been forgiven by the Emperor for his part in the former plot of Artaban the Armenian). The conspiracy was accidentally discovered and the leaders forced to betray the names of their accomplices. Among these leaders was Herodian, the general who had once surrendered Spoleto to King Teudel as
an act of spite against Belisarius and then deserted to the Goths; after Teudel's death he had surrendered Cumae to Narses, and been pardoned by Justinian. On Herodian's return to Constantinople, Belisarius had taken action against him in the courts and recovered the debt of 50,000 pieces of gold which had figured in the story of the surrender of Spoleto. Herodian now, to escape the certain punishment of death, ransomed himself by a false confession that Belisarius was the originator of the plot against Justinian's life. At his suggestion Apion the Public Prosecutor sent his agents to break into Procopius's house in search of documents incriminating Belisarius. Here, locked in a chest, they found the revengeful book of anecdotes. Apion read it, and thereupon threatened that Procopius would be strangled for his insults to the Emperor's Majesty – unless he consented to give such evidence as would secure Belisarius's conviction as a traitor. Procopius consented, and the book was returned to him. Now it will be understood why I name him the infamous Procopius.

Apion came to Belisarius's house early one morning, accompanied by two shorthand writers to the Crown and a party of soldiers. They found him playing at hand-ball before his plunge in the swimming-pool. I was among the players, keeping the goal. Belisarius greeted Apion cheerfully and said: ‘Are you not the newly appointed Public Prosecutor? This is indeed an early call. Will you join us at breakfast after I have had my plunge?'

Apion answered very gravely: ‘His Sacred Majesty's business cannot wait either for your breakfast or mine, nor for any cold plunge. Put on your garments immediately, Count Belisarius. I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of high treason. Soldiers, seize these domestics; their evidence will be needed.'

Belisarius said to me: ‘Eugenius, note down the score of goals; we will conclude this game at some other time. Then beg your mistress, the Lady Antonina, to descend as soon as she conveniently can.'

But they prevented me from fetching my mistress. Apion said: ‘The domestics of the Illustrious Antonina are also to be detained.'

Belisarius dressed himself and invited Apion and the soldiers to come into the tepid room, the day being cold. There Apion read out his warrant, in some such words as these:

To the Illustrious Patrician Belisarius, Count of the Imperial Stables, Commander of the Imperial Bodyguard and of the Armies in the East, Greeting!

Know, Belisarius, by these presents that we Justinian, your Emperor, are displeased with you and require you to submit peacefully to our officer, the Distinguished Public Prosecutor Apion, when he comes with soldiers to apprehend you.

You have repeatedly, over a course of many years, proved yourself a disloyal and mischievous subject, caring more for your own safety, wealth, and glory than for the Sacred Interests of your Master; as the following record will make clear.

First, in the fifth year of our reign, you did permit half of our City of Constantinople to be plundered and burned by the factious mob, before taking action against the ring-leaders, the traitors Hypatius and Pompey.

Item, when we sent you against the Vandals in Africa in the sixth year of our reign you did propose and intend to usurp our sovereignty in that Diocese; but certain loyal generals warned us of your guilt and we recalled you before you could do us that mischief.

Item, when we sent you against the Goths in Italy, in the eighth year of our reign, you did wilfully disregard our written instructions and conclude a peace with the enemy other than that we had authorized. You furthermore did enter into secret correspondence with the Goths and offer yourself to them as a candidate for the Empire of the West, again intending and proposing to usurp our sovereignty; but once more we prevented you. You returned home to this City leaving the Goths unconquered, which was a great hindrance to us.

Item, when we sent you against the Persians, in the thirteenth year of our reign, you avoided battle with them and allowed them to return home unmolested and to destroy our great city of Callinicum.

Item, in the fourteenth year of our reign, when we sent you once more against the Persians, you failed to take advantage of the King's absence, he being then at the task of devastating our territory of Colchis: you did not cross over into Assyria and lay waste the land and rescue the captives taken at Antioch, though that would have been an easy matter; nor did you cut off the King's retreat from the said territory of Colchis.